


Trade Mistakes

by donotforgetme24601



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:45:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donotforgetme24601/pseuds/donotforgetme24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>007 stuffs his empty spaces with lies and plasters them over with habits. But everything rots and everything crumbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trade Mistakes

_Tell me a lie tell me a lie tell me a lie_

Lies were his specialty, he knew what to do with them, he had the training, he had a trigger finger, he had the tools. But honesty was something he couldn't (wouldn't) touch.

Not today, at least. Not yet.

_Tell me a lie._

_Please._  
\---

He didn't want Q's trusting eyes blown wide and soft behind glasses thrown askew, he didn't want the words that were pooling like blood in the cradle of Q's lower lip, he didn't want a heartbeat like hurried footsteps down warped floorboards or the rub of his calloused hands against unmarked flesh. He had sheared away these things and left them in a hidden corner of a home he won't say the name of.

He had carved himself out of stones so old they sang and thick spiderwebs and the way light reflected off rats' eyes and he couldn't lose that. He gave himself over to habits (click and load and fire rinse and repeat straighten the cuffs and don't blink don't scream don't break) and he made himself into sedimentary rock, keeping the pain under layers of stillness and hard eyes. This was his new home, this was his refined self, and he left all else in the farthest corner of the priest hole where rats gather in prayer circles under canopies of cobwebs. He was not one that could allow for boys whose faces told stories, who hadn't scarred over yet, who still had spots and sharp edges of uncut brilliance.

_Don't break_ was all he held onto. _Not today, at least._

_Not yet._  
\---

And yet sunset finds him with Q stretched like a sacrifice under him, smooth and long and angular, fingernails digging crescent moons into his own skin. He shifts with Bond’s thrusts and leaves sweat-streak angel wings on the reflective black surface of the desk. He throws his head back and arches up and he is a line drawing in black and white, too beautiful and too real and too young. 

Bond leaves after, with words like machine-gun clatter, warning shots fired at Q’s feet not to follow and he feels layers of sediment sloughing off, his cracked, termite –infested ribcage being laid bare. Dust and moldering wood chips fall from a birds nest behind his sternum; something had come loose in him and was clicking against his lumbar vertebrae. He had lost. He had run out of lies and this was the point upon which he broke.

There aren’t too many double-oh suicides.

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any part of the Bond franchise and I make no money from this work.


End file.
